Death
In spring 552, Wang Sengbian captured Jiankang, forcing Hou Jing to flee. Xiao Yi had initially ordered Wang to have Xiao Dong killed, but Wang declined—stating that while he was willing to fight Hou, the responsibility of killing an emperor should be entrusted to someone else. Xiao Yi therefore gave the order instead to another general, Zhu Maichen.
Meanwhile, when Hou fled, Xiao Dong and his brothers broke out of their prison, but they were still in chains. They encountered the general Du Shi (杜崱), and Du removed their chains. Xiao Qiao and Xiao Jiu happily stated, "Finally today we have avoided an unnatural death." Xiao Dong responded, "It is difficult to know whether we are facing good fortune or ill fortune. I am still fearful." Soon thereafter, they encounter Zhu, who invited them to drink on his ship. Before they finished, Zhu's guards grabbed them and threw them into the Yangtze River to drown.
Read more about this topic: Xiao Dong
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I mourn the safe and motherly old middle-class queen, who held the nation warm under the fold of her big, hideous Scotch-plaid shawl and whose duration had been so extraordinarily convenient and beneficent. I felt her death much more than I should have expected; she was a sustaining symbol—and the wild waters are upon us now.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Life without a friend is death without a witness.”
—Spanish proverb.
“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)